Process of upgrading to an SSD

[Waco]

I managed to kill my laptop Windows install yesterday moving from a 128 GB SSD down to a 60 GB SSD - never trust Windows to keep drive numbers the same between reboots is what I learned.  I ended up blowing up my laptop drive by copying in the wrong direction.

 

I'd do a clean install if you have the time and a decent internet connection for Windows updates.  Otherwise, a backup image can work but moving from a larger drive to a smaller drive is sometimes a pain in the butt to get booting properly and/or resizing the image properly.

[SpikeSoprano]

wevsspot, on 29 Jan 2014 - 10:13 AM, said:

Spike, just wanted to thank you for the excellent reminder about IDE / AHCI mode and making sure that it is set properly.

 

Nice work.

Your welcome Wev, I always try to go back to computer 101 when giving advice,(which I've noticed you do 99.9% of the time) because it's too easy to forget the simplest solutions. Believe me I've done it far too many times, spent 3 hrs trying to fix a problem that should have taken 15 minutes.

[wevsspot]

I feel you brother. I am the only tech in the area that never suggests a cleanup on a system that has a serious malware infection. I tell people if the infection is serious enough that simple cleaning methods will not work then your best bet is a backup and clean install. The funny thing is my contacts at Comodo, Kaspersky, Norton and AVG all agree.

 

And you know, many (if not most) of the time, it's quicker to do a fresh install than fix full blown infections..........

[Scott P]

The upgrade has gone sideways. I managed to get Windows installed to the SSD by booting from the DVD drive. But, I get stuck at the Loading Operating System screen if I try to boot with the SSD as the first boot device.

 

If I install my old drive and disconnect the others, the computer flashes a very quick blue screen after the Starting Windows screen before rebooting. Startup repair finds nothing.

 

I'm at a loss now and don't know what to do next.

Edited February 1, 2014 by Scott P

[wevsspot]

Scott, when you installed the OS on the SSD, you had all the other drives disconnected right?

[IVIYTH0S]

Does it run perfect if you run your machine in IDE mode again in the bios?

[Scott P]

It's almost running like it should. I installed all of the drives first so I could format and align the SSD, but the computer just wouldn't boot into my primary drive. I booted from the DVD drive with Win 7 and proceeded to format and install on the SSD. My computer sits inside my desk and opening it to move cables is a pain. When it would boot, I had to do just that. Luckily It wasn't as bad as I thought and with just the SSD and optical drive installed, I was able to get into windows. I installed the driver and that seemed to do the trick.

 

I still need to do that alignment thingy. Plus, my new 1 TB drive is not showing up under My Computer. It is there in the BIOS and I can format it in Disk Management, but it just won't show up. 

 

Edit - I did the math trick (divide by 4096 I think) and my SSD was already aligned. No worries there. I finally got into Computer Management to get the machine to recognize my 1 TB drive. Now I can install the rest of my crap., I think I spent most of yesterday and this morning just installing updates for Windows 7 and Office Enterprise 2007. I probably should re-image the drive now to make things easier next time. 

Edited February 2, 2014 by Scott P

[IVIYTH0S]

It should be aligned with a fresh install, I think? (Check with AS SSD perhaps)

 

Also if you wanted to disable your other drives temporarily then you can just disable the sata ports you don't want accessed in the bios.